Water Board

If Matthew, Mark, Luke or John were alive and still writing, Malibu would definitely get a mention in an updated version of the Bible. There'd be a parable about a blessed place of heavenly natural beauty attracting people who foul their nest, introducing pollution to paradise. In the absence of those four sages, there is Zuma Jay, a surf shop owner and city councilman who is about to become mayor of Malibu. Zuma Jay believes it's time to quit fighting the state, enter the current century and install sewers to replace septic tanks that are threatening to turn the Malibu coast into a giant commode.

Southern California's first major seawater desalination plant moved forward Tuesday when it won public subsidies that could eventually amount to $350 million. Years in the planning, the private San Diego County venture would be capable of producing enough water to supply about 100,000 homes. The Carlsbad project is the furthest along of a host of desalination plants under consideration on the California coast. Backers said Tuesday's vote by the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was critical to getting private financing, the plant's next hurdle.

Blaming small-scale septic systems for causing much of the pollution in Malibu's watershed, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board will vote Thursday whether to ban the systems in a large portion of central and eastern Malibu. Under the proposed moratorium, no new septic systems would be permitted, and owners of existing systems would have to halt wastewater discharges within five years. Far from a mundane issue, the staff-recommended proposal has prompted heated debate and threats of legal action in Malibu, where almost all homes and businesses rely on septic systems.

If regional water quality officials approve a proposed ban on septic systems in central Malibu as expected, residential property owners in the affected area would be on the hook for $1,000 a month to pay for a centralized wastewater treatment system, city officials said Monday. Commercial property owners benefiting from the treatment system could be required to lay out significantly more, the city said. Malibu said in a statement that such a system would cost $52 million, more than three times the $16.7-million projection that the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has suggested at recent community workshops.

Seeking to bolster a high-profile conservation agenda, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has named prominent business and government veteran David W. Fleming to the board of Metropolitan Water District, the agency that supplies much of Southern California's water. Fleming, a lawyer who has led city and state commissions as well as the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, will become a Metropolitan Water District director as the agency is warning that it may curtail deliveries because of water shortages in state reservoirs.

The owner of the Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park in Malibu has been hit with a proposed $1.65-million fine for allowing about 2,000 gallons of raw or partially treated sewage to spill into local creeks and the ocean in 2007 and 2008. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board notified the Kissel Co.

Regional water regulators voted to ban septic tanks in the heart of Malibu after a prolonged battle over bacterial pollution leaching into the ocean at some of the state's most popular and famous beaches. Residents and city leaders have long opposed switching from septic tanks to sewer pipes out of concern it would invite massive development to the rustic community. Members of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board on Thursday voted to yank the city's ability to manage commercial septic systems and directed staff to draft a plan banning septic tanks in the city center and to come up with a proposal for a wastewater treatment plant that would break ground in the next few years.

Foreclosed homes have plenty of issues, among which is blighted landscaping. The Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District hopes to rectify that problem. In an effort to keep those lawns from turning brown and further decreasing property values, it has proposed implementing a voluntary "green lien" on the abandoned homes. The lenders or other owners of the repossessed homes who participate in the program would allow the water board to keep the water meters running until the vacant homes are bought.

Boeing Co. obtained a revised permit Thursday for handling rainwater runoff at its heavily contaminated and now shuttered nuclear power and rocket-testing lab in the hills above Simi Valley, despite heated protests from environmentalists. The revisions, which were unanimously approved by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, essentially lowered the risk of Boeing getting fined for exceeding mandated contamination levels of storm runoff.

Atty. Gen.-designate Michael B. Mukasey, adopting a middle ground on an issue that has become central to his nomination, said coercive interrogation methods, including a form of simulated drowning, were "over the line" and "repugnant." But he declined to say whether he thought so-called water-boarding was a form of torture that would be illegal in all cases. His position, detailed in a letter late Tuesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where his nomination to succeed Alberto R.